Herbert Kohl, Wisconsin senator and Milwaukee Bucks owner, dies at 88

Herbert H. Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat who spent four terms as a United States senator overseeing federal budgets but spent lavishly on the team as the die-hard owner of the National Basketball Association’s often mediocre Milwaukee Bucks in his hometown, died. He was 88.

His death was announced by Herb Kohl Philanthropies, his nonprofit organization.

By his own admission, Milwaukee meant the world to Mr. Kohl. His parents had immigrated to the city from Poland and Russia in the early 20th century, and his father, Maxwell Kohl, had opened a corner grocery store there in 1927. Herbert and his three siblings were born and raised in the city, scions of a family that built an empire of Kohl’s stores in the Upper Midwest in a single generation.

In Wisconsin and surrounding states, the Kohl name became almost as well known as Schlitz, which called itself “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.” In 1972, when the British American Tobacco Company purchased a controlling interest in Kohl’s, the company, still controlled by the Kohl family, had 50 supermarkets, six department stores and several networks of pharmacies and liquor stores.

Mayor of Orlando reporting contributed.